New Jersey Republican State Committee

The New Jersey Republican State Committee (NJGOP) is the state affiliate of the conservative Republican Party in the US state of New Jersey. The NJGOP was founded in 1880, and it opposed the New Jersey Democratic State Committee for control of New Jersey's politics. The NJGOP had strong support along the Jersey Shore and in northwestern counties such as Morris and Hunterdon, while the Democrats had strong support in North Jersey and in the counties near New York City and Philadelphia. After the 1990s, the GOP fell out of touch with New Jersey politics, with rural Republicans tending to be strongly conservative and suburban Republicans tending to be moderate Republicans. By the 1990s, the Republican Party had become too conservative for many New Jerseyans, but many Republicans were radicalized due to the 2016 election, which saw Christie endorse the far-right candidate Donald Trump for president. Many Jersey Shore counties voted for Trump, and political tensions skyrocketed; in Monmouth County alone, political turmoil occurred when a Middletown High School South teacher was fired for showing a comedy sketch about Trump, when a Wall Township high school suspended a teacher for editing out a Trump logo on a student's yearbook photo (and a Trump quote from a student's senior quote), and when the ACLU criticized the police chief of Middletown Township for attempting to convince students at a football game to hate Black Lives Matter and blindly support the police. By 2017, the NJGOP controlled the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor's seats (with Chris Christie and Kim Guadagno, respectively), but it held a minority of state legislature seats, with the Democrats controlling state government.